Posted on 06/17/2007 7:28:37 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
A Sellersburg man was arrested and charged with battery for allegedly spanking his son with a leather belt.
Sellersburg Police Department Deputy Chief Donnie Ross said the 7-year-old child’s mother called police Sunday night when he wouldn’t stop crying after suffering a spanking from his father, 46-year-old Ernest E. Haycraft of the 1900 block of Lincoln Drive. Haycraft told police the boy was being punished for purposely breaking one of his toys and that he only struck him “three or four times,” Ross said.
Officers, however, arrested Haycraft after seeing a raised, red welt on the boy’s buttocks.
“(The officers) saw that it was bad enough abuse, and that he needed to be arrested,” Ross said of the incident.
Haycraft has never before been arrested by the Sellersburg Police Department, and Ross thought it to be “a singular incident that hasn’t happened in the past.”
The investigation has been turned over to Child Protective Services of Clark County. A phone call placed to that office Tuesday afternoon was not returned, but a spokeswoman did confirm that a caseworker was investigating the incident. Ross said officers took pictures of the boy’s injuries and submitted them to CPS.
Clark County Deputy Prosecutor Shelley Marble — who specializes in crimes against children — said these types of cases do come across her desk from time to time.
“I probably get about one or two of these (types of cases) a month,” she said from her office Tuesday afternoon.
The problem, she said, is that what police officers find to be probable cause for an arrest often isn’t enough for
prosecutors to get a conviction.
“If a mom whips a kid with a belt, and the kid says it happened and the mom says it happened but there are no marks, then that’s enough for (police) to substantiate inappropriate discipline, but not enough for us to file charges,” she said.
“These types of cases depend on a lot of different variables,” she continued. “You do have parents that are disciplining their child and then you have beating — there is a difference. You have to look at each case individually.”
Marble said she had not yet been informed of the charges preliminary filed against Haycraft and that she likely wouldn’t be until CPS completed its investigation.
Ross said Sellersburg police have, in the past, made similar arrests “where parents have, in our opinion, overreacted to misbehavior and gone above and beyond what we would consider normal discipline.”
“They don’t happen often, but they do happen,” he said.
Ultimately, I own all my children’s belongings, as long as they are my minor children, and they know it. If they break something deliberately out of obvious foolishness, meanness, avoidable carelessness, anger or spite, the use of rod is appropriate. The toy (or other object) being “theirs” will never be a mitigating factor.
People today can’t tell the difference between discipline and cruelty.
“Rebellious spirit”?
You will be humbled in your old age. Youth triumphs, rods or none.
For some reason us girls were excluded from that form of punishment.
I asked dad after I had grown up and he told me, he never hit us girls because he never wanted the boys to think it was okay to hit any female regardless of her age.
Welcome to the nanny states of America.
I hated it when I heard my dads web welt coming out but I what I hated worse was to see him with a Barbers strapping belt that hurt worse but I deserved it. When I got a licking I kept on ticken and no I am not a Timex.
No child burns down a house because they weren’t whipped. That is absurd. A child who burns down a house on purpose is seriously disturbed. I have no trouble with spanking but raised welts is abuse, sorry.
In raising our boys, a good part of which I was in places far away, she chose a system whereby the miscreant had to go outside and selct a ‘’switch’’ (a southern term for a narrow tree or schrub branch) for his own disciplinary whack. I mom wasn’t satisfied, the number increased until he chose one of appropriate length and thickness to enable her to adjust the punishment to fit the crime.
She’s probably been waiting for an opportunity to divorce this guy and walk off with the house, car and half his bank account.
This just gives her a convenient excuse. Now she can shack up with the pool boy and live high on the hog from the alimony.
Our classrooms had a yardstick -—it was called “The Golden Rule”
Do you mean that your children have defeated you? I am already approaching “old” age, my wife and I having raised seven children . . . using the rod when necessary. We have already watched the principles of Proverbs, and the Bible as a whole, work marvelously in our home. We will not be humbled in the way you suppose, because we seek no exaltation, except for our Saviour Jesus Christ. Exalting Him requires obedience to His Word, including in the area of child rearing.
I remember in the California Code it is a violation to "annoy children." I know if my lifetime I am a repeat offender. Just doing the job their parents won't do.
IMO, if there were no marks, you’re not swinging hard enough and the child doesn’t learn the lesson. Even though it wasn't at times, the parent needs to temper their anger afore hand.
Who says the mother was in doubt? She may well have tried to intervene while the beating was going on, and couldn’t because the father threatened her too. Leaving welts on a 7 year old for breaking a toy is way out of control behavior. In this case, the government’s role was to intervene at the request of a private citizen. Perfectly appropriate IMO, just so long as the father gets a fair trial, to determine as best as possible what really happened.
Congratulations! Your post perfectly demonstrates the death of common sense among a large section of the American citizenry.
See the first quote on my FR home page.
What a remember hating the most are the face slaps and the paddle whipping that left my butt bruised and bleeding.
I deserved most of my whippings, but quite a few times he went over the line. I would have liked to turn him in for it but was afraid they wouldnt side with me and I would get a worse beating. The 100s of paddlings at school didnt compare, they stung sure..but I knew it wasnt abuse.
Today, I whip my kids if they really need it, after I calm down and only on the butt and just hard enough to hurt. Even then its a last resort after warnings.
Drowns puppies too, I bet...
To me that can often be the fine line between strong discipline and abuse — the parent can not be out of control.
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I agree with you. I am a boomer. My father never hit me with anything but his hands, but my mother used objects. I turned out fine, but I think physical discipline should be used sparingly.
I am a woman, and I raised 4 boys. I tried to limit corporal punishment, and I used only my hands. You cannot reason with a 16-month-old baby, but you can loudly say “No!” If that does not work, a moderate swat on a diaper-clad behind usually will.
When they got to be around 12 years old and decided to speak disrespectfully to me, I had no qualms about about rendering a good slap across the face. I did not have to do that too many times.
This guy probably over-reacted, but his wife should have taken it up with him out of earshot of the kid and definitely should not have called the police. I don’t consider it abuse, but, as you suggest, a case of being out of control.
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